


Lay Me to Sleep

by time_transfixed



Category: Town of Salem (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Obsessive Behavior, One-Sided Attraction, Public Execution, Unhealthy Relationships, basically the standard set of issues for an exe, hm anything else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-22 23:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16607597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/time_transfixed/pseuds/time_transfixed
Summary: There was nothing,nothing, the Executioner would not do to ensure the happiness of the Veteran.





	Lay Me to Sleep

The slant of the eyes. Round ovals. Sharpen them at the sides, cut off the unnecessary bits. The perfect distance between the eyes and the sides of the face. A faint hint of shading under the eyes. Dull. 

Then the curve of the lips. The ideally proportioned face has the corners of the mouth align perfectly with the corners of the eyes. He’ll need to erase again. Slightly cracked, the bottom lip’s been chewed. Dry. 

Ears align with the eyebrows. There’s a tiny scar on the right one, a barely noticeable nick, but the Executioner sketches it in anyway as he shades in the inner ear. 

The Executioner shoots the Veteran a quick smile across the square and finishes the outlining the fall of his hair. It’s messy. Hasn’t been combed in weeks. Quick, rapid strokes of the pencil. Layered shading. 

The Veteran graces him with a tired glance, sighing but favoring him with a strained smile anyway.

Slightly darker shading under the eyes. The Executioner hates how much it stands out against the white of his sketchbook. 

He smiles back at the Veteran, ignoring the familiar feeling of love bubbling up, and tells him he’s making something beautiful. On paper, he scratches out the Veteran’s scowl, pulling the corners upwards a little bit. The Veteran could certainly stand to look happier

There’s something fascinating about the Veteran. The Executioner’s not sure what initially attracted him. Perhaps it’s the idea of the broken war hero, the shattered pieces of something that had once been whole, glued and fused together in monumental, something truly sublime.

But he makes for a great muse, if the already half-filled pages of his fifth sketchbook are anything to go by.

***  
The Veteran is the sun, grand, blazing, terrifyingly beautiful in his intensity. He isn’t meant to be like this, a tired man who looks ten years too old; it’s as if the sun has gone out and the Executioner is left cold and empty as he looks upon the waning shell of a man. 

“Do you want to play a game?” the Executioner asks. In truth he doesn’t care much for games, Monopoly or checkers or whatever, but he hates the melancholy that his beloved has fallen into, and he’d do anything to fix it. 

“No,” the Veteran says. “Perhaps you should leave; I’m probably not going to be very good company tonight.” 

“I’ll stay,” he offers, hoping he doesn’t sound too eager, “it doesn’t matter; we can sit here in silence if you want.” 

It wouldn’t be a loss for the night even if the two of them just sat there the entire night, as long as the Executioner could be allowed near the Veteran’s sun.

“Is there anything that I can do to help?” 

“I doubt it.” 

***  
Fat bits of charcoal, broken on one side. Thick lines form bunched up eyebrows. The Veteran’s eyes burn out from the page. The Executioner sits back and smiles, ignoring the way the black dust smears all over his hands. 

He holds it up to the light. It looks exactly like the Veteran, although the charcoal’s smudged in several places, and the Executioner slides it carefully back into his sketchbook. 

***  
He was suffering; that was plain to see. No matter what medium the Executioner uses, faded watercolors, dark charcoals, or thick oil paints, the silent struggle the Veteran is fighting is as clear as day. 

“You’re afraid of dying.” 

“What makes you say that?” And his unexpectedly defensive response only confirms what the Executioner has known all along. 

“Ironic, that you’ve spent so long inflicting death on others but you’re still so afraid of it yourself.” It’s the wrong thing to say, the Executioner knows, as defensiveness melts into anger. 

“Change the subject. What I did during that war is really none of your business, no matter how much I might enjoy your company.”

“Are you afraid they’ll come back in the after life?” 

The Veteran stands up, face pale and drawn with steel in his eyes, “Get out.” 

“What’s wrong?” The Executioner continues, picking up steam. He needs to know, needs this final confirmation. 

“Don’t make me tell you twice.” 

“I’ll go,” he says hastily, one foot already out the door. The Veteran’s anger, only half revealed as it is, is something to behold, a storm, a force of nature. If he had ever any doubt as to whether his beloved was an extremely effective soldier, this would’ve cleared it up. 

Still, as he walks home in silence, drawing his arms closer together in an effort to keep the warmth in, he knows precisely how to help now. 

***  
He uses pastels this time, trying to restore life to the Veteran’s face, and he can’t help but notice how vibrant the colors on the page are, a thick blend of light browns and yellows and whites, how washed out the subject looks in reality, a carbon copy. A shame really. 

***  
A simple solution really, a quick, painless end to all of their problems. 

But the Executioner couldn’t let them, couldn’t let the Mafia or the Serial Killer do the part, oh no, that would be far too cruel. He wants, needs this to be as painless as possible. 

He thinks of his mother, may she rest in peace, lost in that endless starlight, a maze of her own creation. That was the root of it all. The trials are cruel, yes, but there’s a way of dying on one’s own terms, and the Executioner surely has enough power left to save his beloved from the sorrows of this life. 

It’s the Investigator who gives him the opportunity, that wonderfully stupid Investigator, the one who points to the Veteran and calls him Mafia because of the gun he finds in his house. Never mind the fact that a number of townspeople must carry firearms these days; the streets are too dangerous at night and there’s no guarantee that locking yourself up in your home is going to be of any help either.

“You can’t be Veteran,” he says, feeling all eyes on him, “ _I’m the Veteran_ , and there’s only one of us in town.” 

The town explodes. They want one of them to die, and at this point it matters little to them which one. 

The Executioner doesn’t catch the Veteran’s eye, doesn’t dare to, but he’s occupied enough with making sure the town doesn’t lynch him first, otherwise all of his effort will be for nothing. 

Nothing comes of the day; it’s wasted on shouting matches and an endless cycle of being voted up to the stand only to be acquitted once again. The Executioner dares to hope though, when the Jailor chooses not to question him more thoroughly. 

The Veteran had been jailed. The Mafia chose not to go out that night.

The Executioner is the first one there in the town square the next morning, fire singing in his veins.

“Why are you doing this?” The Veteran says, almost resigned, and oh so tired. That tone alone gives fuel to the Executioner, spurs him onwards; it’s just so _wrong_. “Did I kill one of your family members too? Maybe a brother this time?” 

“You didn’t kill any family member of mine,” the Executioner says, slightly confused. 

“Really? Lately that always seems to be the case.” 

“I-“ 

The Investigator’s shout rings across the square. “Can we hang one of the suspicious Veteran claim now?” he demands, stepping gingerly over the Retributionist’s slashed open corpse. 

Nobody else had visited him the past few nights. There is no way for the Veteran to clear his name; at this point it is purely his word against the Executioner’s and the odds are not in his favor. 

The Executioner almost doesn’t believe it. 

“No,” he repeats, “I’m the only Veteran in this town. Guilty this, they must be a Mafioso! Feel free to execute me if you don’t believe me!”

After all, it wouldn’t matter after the fact. 

And he ignores the betrayed look the Veteran’s face that sinks his heart like poison. This is all for a good cause, and who said that good things don’t require a bit of hard work to obtain? In time, he would see, when he feels the sweet embrace of death, that it is nothing to be afraid of, that it's a blessing. 

The guilty votes come in. This is something the Executioner needs to do though, one last responsibility to fulfill. So he shakes his head at the Mayor and the other town member that steps forward. 

There are so many things the Executioner wants to say to him, and such little time to do so. _Don’t be afraid_ he wants to say _death is an sweet, painless outcome._ And _I’ll be with you, always._

_I’ll join you soon perhaps?_

But time’s running out, and there’s one last thing he needs to make clear. 

“I love you,” he whispers in the Veteran’s ear, as he kicks the stool out from underneath his beloved.

**Author's Note:**

> this is rather poorly edited and doesn't flow or transition nearly as well as it probably should but at this point I just need to finish this and get it out of the way so that I can actually do something productive today. 
> 
> I didn't think I would end up writing an exe fic anytime soon but the idea of exe trying to lynch their target out of a misguided sense of love rather than intense hatred is wonderfully ironic and deserves to be explored probably way more in depth than I went 
> 
> also exe being the one to kick the stool out makes him a real executioner now hahaha
> 
> let me know if I got any of the descriptions of the facial proportions wrong; it's been a while since I've done anything art-related that wasn't landscape


End file.
